Hello Cryptex Community,
Following up on the Season 2 thread, it’s time to open the conversation for Season 3, which I’m proposing to run for four months, September through December 2026.
Quick recap
Just so we’re all on the same page before getting into numbers:
- Season 1 ran with a total approved budget of 31,562 CTX for a 3-month period, with 1/3 going to Legacy Staking and the rest to the Aragon-based system (roughly 21,042 CTX to Aragon for the whole season).
- Season 2 (June–August 2026) went through a full community debate and ended up settling at 100,000 CTX total for the 3-month period via a token-weighted signal vote, coming out to roughly 33,333 CTX/month.
The reasoning behind that Season 2 number was mostly tied to where CTX was trading at the time. Price wasn’t in a great spot, and some stakers pushed for a bigger number to make the rewards feel meaningful in dollar terms. I’ll be honest, from the contributors’ side we felt 100k was on the high end for where our treasury stood, but we respected the signal vote and moved forward with it.
Where things stand now
We’re four months out from that decision and a few things have changed:
- Price has recovered some ground since June, and the trend so far suggests it should keep improving (to be clear, we’re not guaranteeing anything here, we don’t control the markets and this has been a genuinely difficult year across the whole crypto space, but we are hopeful things keep moving in the right direction). That changes the math on how much CTX we actually need to hand out to make rewards feel meaningful.
- More importantly, our CTX treasury is simply not in a position where we can repeat a 100k allocation. We need to be honest about that. Doing another season at that size would put us in a rough spot given everything else the treasury needs to cover, and that’s really the main driver behind this proposal.
So the balance I’m trying to strike here is: don’t go back down to Season 1 levels, because we do want staking and delegation to matter, but don’t repeat Season 2 either, because the treasury genuinely can’t support it right now.
Proposal
12,500 CTX/month for 4 months = 50,000 CTX total for Season 3 (September–December 2026).
That’s less than half of the Season 2 monthly rate (33,333 CTX/month), but it’s meaningfully more than Season 1 on a monthly basis, and it stretches over a longer window so stakers still get a full four months of consistent rewards. My view is that if the price keeps trending the way it has, the real value of these rewards to stakers doesn’t shrink as much as the raw CTX number might suggest.
Structure
Keeping the same mechanics we used in Season 2, since it worked and nobody’s raised concerns with the structure itself:
- Rewards are split into monthly campaigns, one per month, four campaigns total for the season.
- If proposals are up for a vote during a given month, eligibility to claim that month’s rewards is tied to delegate participation.
- If there are no proposals to vote on during a given month, rewards default to being distributed based on stake amount and lock duration.
I’m not proposing any changes to the eligibility mechanic itself — just carrying it forward. If anyone feels that needs revisiting given the smaller pool, now’s the time to raise it.
Let me know your thoughts below, especially if you were part of the Season 2 discussion — curious whether this lands as a reasonable middle ground or if there’s pushback on the number or the four-month length.